Reliable motherboards?

[inca666]

After owning an asus m47at-e for the good portion of the year now ive had nothing but problems, blue screens, hyper transport errors, EVERYTHING. today i decided ive had enough with this cheap chinese piece of ***. I never want to buy asus again i cant tell you how many hours of my life have been wasted because of these assholes. After getting blue screens all day i raged so hard that i threw the pc in the garbage. now that ive cooled off i realised thats probably not the smartest move. So I am going to just buy a new motherboard and work from there. Looking around on new egg i see absolutely no motherboards that are 100% reliable. A good portion arrive DOA, experience issues like i am having or some even catch fire, what gives?

Im stumped here, so i thought id ask the toms hardware community on what is the most reliable motherboard out there right now? bear in mind that its for a gaming machine and im looking to pay around 100$


Im looking to reuse these components so what works best with these would be nice.

4gb g.skill ripjaws
amd phenom 2 x3 2.8 ghz
radeon hd4870

 

[inca666]

I guess we can agree that there is no such thing as a reliable gaming motherboard then lol

 

[rollaballinc]

XFX or EVGA are good companies

 

[iceclock]

asus is quite reliable with ur motherboard, just some of the lower end models do have problems , but that with any company as well, u cant expect 0 problems, doesnt happen today and never will, most likely, u as a consummer should read up on specific parts before buying it to make shur the hardware has been tested and has the least problems operating

 

[christop]

Asus boards are reliable. I have used them for years. Gigabyte is good. I also take newegg reviews with a grain of salt.

 

[rollaballinc]

Asus , and gigabyte. I havent personally used but have heard loads of Asus complaints and Asrock complaints

 

[DokkRokken]

I had similar Hyper Transport error issues with my MSI board when I first got it. Often, the system would blue screen right after boot, or on occasion, in the middle of a gaming session. It was not the boards fault however, and was just me being sloppy with my overclocking.

It seems that it can be caused either by lack of voltage to the CPU, the motherboard's V-Droop setting, or the RAM voltage needs to be increased.

This thread from AMD forums helped me out considerably:

http://forums.amd.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=22&threadid=88140

If you can get your board back up and running, I'd try to debug it with the suggestions provided in this thread, providing you haven't read it yet.

As for reliable boards, I've had tremendous success with MSI being solid performers.

 

[inca666]

More troubles today, seems all the crashing messed up other components I had MASSIVE hard drive failure, partion tables where screwed saying i had 41000 gbs on a 250 gb drive. I was gonna go with msi as i have the same asus board in 2 machines and both have similar problems. I tried upping the voltage and it worked for about a month then started crashing again. I cleaned off all the contacts on the memory and gfx card and dusted off the inside of the case and reinstalled windows and it seems to be stable. But ive done this countless times and I know itll work for a month and start doing the same thing again =/


I was looking at this particular board here from msi but it seems like either its a wonder or DOA. I dont know whats better a board that you gamble itll work at all, or one that keeps crashing.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130275

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Asus didn't get to be the market leader by making crappy products. Like most other companies, they build to suit various demographics. Like anything else, ya get what ya pay for. The Asus Sabertooth line for example has militarized components and a 5 year warranty, and this $200-ish board is going to be constructed w/ better components then their $90 boards.

No. 2 in sales is Gigabyte and at No. 3 we have Asus's sibling. Back in 2002, Asutek (Asus) spun of a budget build oriented subsidiary, ASrock, some years ago, gaining its independence from Asus in June of last year.

Interesting note on Asus's website:

http://event.asus.com/mb/2010/pride/pride_global.aspx

Readers and editors of Tom’s Hardware, a leading IT media site, have given ASUS the "Motherboard Manufacturer of the Year" Award for five consecutive years. ASUS has also been awarded "Motherboard of the Year" by Custom PC/Bit Tech users and editors. These awards are chosen by users, for users, and prove that ASUS is a brand you can rely on

 

[DokkRokken]

One thing worth remembering is that satisfied customers are less likely to post a review, whereas those who are having issues will do write-ups. That, in addition to a lot of bad reviews on Newegg seeming to be user-error rather than the boards themselves, means I always take user reviews with a bit of salt.

If you're wary about the MSI, perhaps consider this Gigabyte board:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128443&cm_re=amd_870-_-13-128-443-_-Product

I haven't had the pleasure of using Gigabyte, but they've always been about solid operation, and their Dual Bios means that you have a backup in case things go wrong. Nice feature-set, and the price is right for what you get.

If you Google the board, you'll find another reputed hardware site absolutely loving it.

 

[inca666]

board was 150$ when it was bought, so if im getting what i paid for it should last at least 5 years and something that actually works. The fact that i have it running in 2 different computers and BOTH have problems, and there being 6000 forum posts on new egg complaining about this board leads me to believe that asus is making cheap crap. Im building a pc for my cousin and we got an msi board so ill see how that goes. gigabyte may be another one worth a try

 

[PixelOz]

I've had a couple of Asus motherboards, a couple of ECS motherboards and one MSI in the last twelve years. Two of them died recently, one of the Asus and one of the ECS but that was after about 8 years of good service and boy do we use our computers at home!

8 years of hard service and sometimes leaving them turned on for several days (many, many times) so I can't complain cause I'm satisfied with the service life that I got out of them and 8 years of that kind of service is a reasonable life expectancy in my opinion and by now they were obsolete anyway.

Now in terms of which ones performed the better I'll say the the two Asus were quirky sometimes. Sometimes for example when I was installing components or replacing them they refused to recognize them (like failing to recognize hard drives or CD Rom drives for several boots and so) and a few other quirks so even if they gave me quite a few years of service I don't buy Asus anymore.

The two ECS motherboards performed very well and the MSI one have run without a hitch.

 

[Matt087_48]

IVe owned at least 25 asus , 7 msi, 3 asrocks, 2 gigabyte, 2 foxconn and 2 ECS boards heres my success rate breakdown

Asus 92% I had one refurb i bought not boot , and i have had one Lock multiplier to 6 no matter what cpu i put in it , all the others have worked great some for many years.

MSI 90% , Out of the 7 i had one refurb get to where it would reboot 4 times before it would power on , after it does power on it works except the ram is maxed at 601mhz , the board uses 800mhz ddr2 ram.

Asrock 100%, all three ive purchased worked fine haven't used them as extensively as other builds but they all function as intended.

Gigabyte 70%, both i owned previously are sold , I had a boot loop issue with one of them over time, second one worked at stock settings only so i'll give it a 70% mark.

Foxconn 0% BOTH Boards would not boot up ever

ECS 0% BOTH boards would not boot up ever


From my experience stay completely Away from Foxconn and ECS